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Parker says judge erred, wants movie fraud sentence reduced

U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss erred when she sentenced Vermont storyteller Malcolm “Mac” Parker to more prison time than government prosecutors had recommended for his role in a $28 million movie fraud scheme, a new court filing by Parker’s lawyers contends. He was sentenced to one and a half years more than the prosecution recommended.

U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss erred when she sentenced Vermont storyteller Malcolm “Mac” Parker to more prison time than government prosecutors had recommended for his role in a $28 million movie fraud scheme, a new court filing by Parker’s lawyers contends.

“Mr. Parker’s sentence must be vacated, as it is unreasonable, and remanded for re-sentencing,” Parker attorney John Pacht wrote in a 41-page document filed this week with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.

Parker pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and filing false tax papers in connection with allegations he misled hundreds of investors, most of them Vermonters, into providing $28 million for a movie that cost $1 million to make and remains unfinished.

He was sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison.

Pacht argued Parker deserved the lower sentence because he had fully cooperated with the government’s investigation into the role of Parker’s silent partner and spiritual mentor, Louis Soteriou, in the fraud scheme.

“Parker gave the government a ‘window’ into the conspiracy, which allowed the government to move forward with its investigation and indict Soteriou,” Pacht wrote in the filing. “After meeting with Parker, the government used the information provided by Parker to elicit incriminating statements from Soteriou, thereby ensuring Soteriou’s guilty plea.”

Soteriou pleaded guilty in April to money laundering and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. He was sentenced to seven years in prison at a hearing in August two days prior to Parker’s sentencing hearing. Soteriou is now incarcerated at the Fort Devens Federal Medical Facility in Devens, Mass.

Reiss, at Parker’s sentencing hearing, threw out a government proposal to give Parker a three-year sentence and ordered that he serve 55 months in prison instead. Parker began his sentence Oct. 1 at a federal correctional facility in Ray Brook, N.Y.

Reiss said at the hearing that she was increasing Parker’s prison time because she did not believe Parker had really accepted responsibility for his conduct and would not have been a convincing witness against Soteriou, had Soteriou’s case gone to trial.

“I’m concerned about what level of delusion remains,” Reiss told Parker at the hearing. “I was dismayed to hear suggestions that it’s really the investors’ fault because they were so greedy... Those people didn’t plead guilty to fraud. You did.”

“That’s exactly how a Ponzi Scheme works,” Reiss continued, according to a transcript of the proceeding. “You offer all of those benefits, you make those promises and people put aside their common sense and their financial wisdom and give people loads of money. That’s how they work across the country.”

Pacht said Reiss’s reference to delusion was based on an “unsupported, psychological diagnosis of Parker.”

“The court thus based its conclusion that Parker was a risk to the public in large part on the court’s unsubstantiated concern that Parker remained delusional,” Pacht wrote in his filing.

According to court documents, Parker raised all the money for the movie, called Birth of Innocence, and oversaw its filming and production.

Soteriou, whose role as silent partner was not known to the investors until a state investigation of the fund raising was begun, spent more than $4 million of the money on luxury hotels and cars as he pursued a spiritual quest he believed would allow him to transcend earthly life and travel through space and time.

That accomplishment, court documents said, was supposed to allow Soteriou to go ahead in time and see winning lottery numbers, then return to the present and win the money by purchasing lottery tickets and marking down the correct numbers.

The winnings could then be used to pay back all the investors the money they were owed.